Three months ago, voters, many angry over the loss of education funding, made history by booting from office a sitting governor many viewed as responsible for the loss of thousands of teaching jobs and classroom programs for their children.

On Wednesday, newly installed Gov. Tom Wolf sought to capitalize on that sentiment to achieve a campaign promise of taxing natural gas production.

Standing in a Chester County elementary school classroom, Wolf proposed an unspecified boost in spending on public education by making natural gas drillers who operate in the state's Marcellus Shale regions pay more in taxes and fees.

"There is a great opportunity here in terms of matching this need for funding and something we have in Pennsylvania," Wolf said at Caln Elementary School in the Coatesville Area School District. "We sit on top of one of the richest deposits of natural gas in the world. So a severance tax on that resource would be something that is really appropriate."

Wolf's proposal mirrors West Virginia's gas levy: a 5 percent tax on the value of natural gas produced from a well and a 4.7-cent fee for every 1,000 cubic feet of gas extracted.

Wolf said the tax-and-fee structure would generate $1 billion a year, with the "lion's share" going to education. The rest would go to local governments and to the Department of Environmental Protection.

"This is a reasonable tax," Wolf said.

The gas industry disagrees. And West Virginia, which is far behind Pennsylvania in natural gas drilling and production, plans to end its 4.7-cent fee between 2016 and 2018.

If the Easton Area School District, which has struggled financially for years, receives additional state funding, Superintendent John Reinhart said that money would go toward creating full-day kindergarten classes. More state money would also keep the district from dipping into its reserves.

Still, the district isn't banking on more from the state.

"We have had no assurances that some of the new revenue will be directed at public schools," Reinhart said. "Gov. Wolf seems to want to direct new funds to public schools, but I am not sure that the Legislature would like to do that."

Wolf's proposal is not new.

Former Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat like Wolf, proposed it in 2009, when shale drilling was picking up throughout the commonwealth. Rendell backed away from that initial push but re-introduced the idea in 2010. He eventually proposed that a larger share of tax revenue go to shale-region municipalities facing costs from drilling activity, instead of using it to fill state budget gaps.

The debate stalled, however, over how the money should be spent and over finding a tax rate that raises enough money without driving the industry to another gas state.

Senate Republicans pushed for a lower rate with more deductions for drillers and more money for local governments, while Democrats sought a higher rate that allowed more money for statewide programs.

Unable to reach agreement by the end of Rendell's term, the debate shifted to enacting what Senate Republicans re-branded as an "impact fee" when Republican Tom Corbett was elected governor on a pledge not to raise taxes.

In November, Wolf denied Corbett a second term, making Corbett the state's first modern-era governor not to win back-to-back elections.

Like a severance tax, the per-well fee Pennsylvania enacted in 2012 accounts for fluctuations in gas prices, but it doesn't account for changes in a well's production. Democrats decried the levy as too low and have continued to call for a larger tax on gas production.

In a report issued last year, the Legislature's Independent Fiscal Office pegged the impact fee's effective tax rate at less than 2 percent.

At least 36 other states have a severance tax of some kind, according to the national Conference of State Legislatures. Pennsylvania's current well fee is lower than all other states' severance taxes except Ohio's, the Fiscal Office report also found. Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich is now calling for a higher severance tax.

The gas industry and some Republicans oppose new taxes in Pennsylvania, arguing that the impact fee, which generated $225 million last year, is sufficient and fair given the corporate net income taxes or personal income taxes companies also pay. Also with gas prices down significantly this year, some energy companies have vowed to cut costs.

"Natural gas operators pay the same taxes that every other business in Pennsylvania pays, which has helped generate more than $2.1 billion through 2013," said David Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a trade group.

Wolf's proposal also is sure to run into opposition in the Republican-controlled Legislature, especially if Wolf is unwilling to give lawmakers some of what they want in next year's budget, which is expected to carry at least a $2 billion deficit.

House Republicans want to raise cash by privatizing the state liquor store system; Wolf opposes the idea. Senate Republicans want to change public pensions for workers and teachers to save money.

Another challenge may be convincing anxious local officials, who currently receive the bulk of the impact fee, that their share of the revenue pie won't be cut back under a severance tax.

"The major thing for us will be whether we get the same amount on the same terms," said Doug Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

Wolf may have advantages that could help him get over opposition in the halls of the Capitol. The state is in dire need of new money and the public wants a severance tax, said Chris Borick, Muhlenberg College pollster and political science professor.

Bond credit rating agencies have begun raising the state's borrowing costs because of budget problems due to no surplus of money, weak revenues, mounting pension debt and slower job growth than the national average.

A Mercyhurst University poll, released Monday, found that 61 percent of state voters support a 5 percent extraction tax.

Republicans will have to decide whether to boost taxes on a niche industry, on all businesses, or whether to raise the income tax on residents, Borick said.

But Drew Crompton, who is chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and was involved in drafting the impact fee, described Wolf's proposal as "an incredibly high initial rate."

He said the 4.7-cent fee adds approximately 3 percent onto the tax given current natural gas prices — for an effective rate of about 8 percent.

Crompton's estimation of the effective tax rate is higher than one projected in the Independent Fiscal Office's March 2014 report. The report said combining West Virginia's severance tax and fee equates to roughly a 5.8 percent effective tax rate.

West Virginia lowered its severance tax to 5 percent in 1989, said Mark Muchow, the state's deputy director of the Department of Revenue. After corporate deductions, the severance tax drops to an average of about 4.8 percent, he said.

The 4.7-cent fee was put in place in 2005 as a temporary measure to cover workers' compensation claims, and will end in the next few years, he said.

West Virginia's overall effective tax rate has gone as high as 6.8 percent in recent years, Muchow said. If gas prices are up, effective tax rate goes down and vice versa, he said.

But a state's tax structure plays a smaller role in where companies drill than the price of gas does, Muchow said. If gas prices are up, companies will drill, he said.

"They go for where they can make the most money the quickest, and for a variety of reasons Pennsylvania fit the bill," Muchow said.